Worst Trump Cabinet Member? Gotta Be Pete Hegseth.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks at a press briefing at the Pentagon on Tuesday. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Not too long ago, I was considering a contest of sorts to name the worst member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Which would have been a tough choice. But they’re dropping like flies. First, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who presided over the formation of a lethal and criminal secret police force. Then, two days ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who tried to turn the Justice Department into a hit team for Trump. In the initial reporting, several reasons for her ouster were suggested: her botched handling of the Epstein files, her recent horrific appearance on Capitol Hill, or her failure to whip up successful prosecutions of Trump’s enemies and critics.

My bet is the last one was the biggest driver of Trump’s decision to bounce Bondi. For a long time, I’ve said that Trump’s top three psychological motivations are revenge, revenge, and revenge. Then comes money and the narcissistic need to be worshiped. So far, the Justice Department’s retribution crusade has largely flopped. The cases against former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the six Democratic legislators who reminded service members they ought not follow illegal orders, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and others have each failed to gain traction, with several hitting serious roadblocks in the courts.

Other prosecutions are in the works, reportedly targeting former special counsel Jack Smith, former CIA Director John Brennan, Hillary Clinton, and past Obama administration national security officials. But there have been no indictments yet on those fronts. Trump must be irate.

The prosecutions we’ve seen have generally been crap cases, marred by procedural irregularities and tremendously stupid errors. They are likely not winnable. Bondi can be blamed for having yielded to Trump’s fervent and maniacal desire to abuse his power and pervert the Justice Department. But she can’t be held responsible for the legal system holding firm against these clumsy and transparent authoritarian exertions.

Too bad for her, Trump doesn’t believe in the rule of law. He’s a cheater. He has always been a cheater. He lies. He doesn’t pay his bills. On the golf course, his caddy sneakily repositions his ball. Rules and laws, as he sees it, don’t apply to him and his whims. Therefore, Bondi could not defend her lack of results by saying the courts—and their pesky laws—stymied these get-even cases. In Trump’s world, her job was to find ways around these laws and rules and exact vengeance. If she cannot, she’s of no use to him.

Trump has often been compared to a mob boss. So let’s look at this from a Sopranos perspective. If the don orders a lieutenant to bump off someone, that lieutenant can’t come back, job undone, and say, “Sorry, I couldn’t do it, boss. It turns out that murder is illegal.” The point is to defy the law to accomplish the mission. Bondi, though she tried, couldn’t succeed in doing that. The explanation that laws and procedures got in the way won’t fly with Trump.

Bondi didn’t deliver on Trump’s top priority for the Justice Department: personal retribution. So she now sleeps with the fishes—metaphorically.

Back to the worst Cabinet member. With these two women gone—and Laura Loomer, MAGA activist, Trump adviser, and conspiracy theorist, targeting Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for defenestration—the pool is shrinking. That puts Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in an advantageous position for this dubious award.

If there were judges, they would not need to look beyond the past few weeks. During the Iran war, Hegseth has spewed extreme rhetoric, celebrating the violence of the war and demonstrating a detestable bloodlust. He has railed against “stupid rules of engagement” and exclaimed that there would be “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” The term “no quarter” has a specific definition, meaning that enemy combatants will be executed rather than taken prisoner. That is a war crime.

Following Trump's address on the war this week, in which the president vowed to send Iran "back to the Stone Ages, where they belong," Hegseth enthusiastically embraced this ugly sentiment with a post on X: "Back to the Stone Age." That implies deliberately imparting tremendous harm on the civilian population—again, another war crime.

Hegseth also has cast this war as a religious crusade, saying that Americans should take a knee and pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.” 

Last month, 46 Democratic senators sent Hegseth a letter denouncing his “comments [that] send a clear message of disregard for the laws of war”:

This rhetoric only serves to endanger civilians, including American citizens, in the region and around the globe. The United States is a party to the Geneva Conventions and bound by international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. These are binding and non-negotiable standards designed to protect innocent human life, and it is unacceptable for the Secretary of Defense to suggest otherwise.

Thirty House Democrats have asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to “assess whether Secretary Hegseth’s extreme religious rhetoric has metastasized into segments of the military chain of command in ways that contravene constitutional protections, departmental rules and standards, or professional military norms.”

The problem is not limited to Hegseth’s tone. He recently intervened to kill an investigation of military pilots who conducted an unnecessary flyby of Kid Rock’s house in Tennessee apparently to celebrate the mediocre, pro-Trump musician. This was an interference in the chain of command for seemingly partisan purposes. Hegseth stands accused of blocking promotions of senior military officers because they are Black or women. In the middle of a war, on Thursday, he fired the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, as part of the feud he’s having with Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll that reportedly involves Hegseth’s denial of these promotions. Whatever the reason, seems a bit petty—and stupid to dump the Army’s top guy at this moment.

Worst of all, Hegseth, a former Fox News commentator who never ran a large organization, miscalculated the Iran war. As Time reported this week:

Key Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were surprised by the barrage of retaliatory attacks Tehran launched against U.S. and Israeli targets across the region, including in countries long assumed to be off-limits: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, a state that had both harbored Iran’s terrorist proxies and served as a conduit for backchannel diplomacy between the U.S. and Hamas. The response shattered the assumption that Tehran would confine itself to performative retaliation. In internal deliberations before the war’s launch, Hegseth had pointed to Iran's muted reaction to Trump’s past attacks as evidence that calibrated force could impose costs on Tehran without triggering a broader war. Hegseth “was caught off guard. There’s no question,” says a person familiar with his thinking.

Oops. Like the rest of the Trump clown-show clods, Hegseth did not foresee the Strait of Hormuz becoming a problem if the US launched a war on Iran.

No one really expects Trump to know what he’s doing. As his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said, he launched this war because of a “feeling” he had. Solid strategic thinking there, right? But the bro running the Pentagon ought to be able to recognize and evaluate the basic elements and consequences of a military attack that triggers a full-scale war. He also should display a degree of somberness at the prospect of killing people and delivering destruction and do what he can to make the war less divisive at home. That is, put aside the warrior cosplaying.

Hegseth has failed miserably on many fronts. So he’s my current nominee for worst Cabinet member. Debate me.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

I know it may seem hyperpartisan to dwell on the craziness within MAGA and the GOP. But I did write a book on this topic, and I don’t think this fundamental fact of modern American politics is fully realized by the public or sufficiently conveyed by the media. Here are two recent examples of lunacy embedded within the right.

First, MAGA champ and former Rep. Matt Gaetz—who, according to a congressional investigation, likely committed statutory rape of a 17-year-old—recently shared a secret about extraterrestrial aliens with Benny Johnson, the MAGA influencer with a history of plagiarism who received hundreds of thousands of dollars (maybe more) from a covert Russia operation for pumping out pro-Trump blather. Gaetz, now a host on far-right One America News, said that when he was in Congress a fellow wearing a US Army uniform came to his local office in Florida and told him about a program in which “captured aliens were breeding with humans to create some hybrid race that could engage in intergalactic communication.” He explained, “Aliens that were living were in forced breeding programs with humans who had been abducted from war zones and even the caravans of migrants. Now again, I didn’t verify this.”

Gaetz didn’t verify this tip, but he is treating this information as credible. And so is Johnson. By the way, a plan to create human-alien hybrids was a main plot in The X Files. 

Next up is Gregg Phillips, a prominent 2020 election denier and conspiracy theorist. He leads the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of Response and Recovery. CNN reported last month that Phillips has repeatedly claimed that has been involuntarily teleported:

“I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House—this was in Georgia and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said in the January 2025 podcast episode.

“And they said, ‘Where are you?’ and I said, ‘A Waffle House.’ And ‘a Waffle House where?’ And I said, ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said, ‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”

“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips added. “It’s no fun because you don’t really know what you’re doing. You don’t really understand it, it’s scary, but yet um—but so real. And you know it’s happening, but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what just an incredible adventure it all was.”

After his comments about teleportation were reported, Phillips stuck with the story. On Trump’s Truth Social, Phillips wrote that the teleportation incidents were linked to a “spiritual journey” during a period when he was undergoing cancer treatments. He cited his “faith in my Savior, Jesus Christ,” and noted, “The Bible has many examples of the power of God.” Phillips is the senior US official in charge of the federal government’s response to disasters.

Trumpists are yearning for an authoritarian takeover of the United States by you-know-who. During an interview with fellow MAGAist Eric Metaxas, right-wing author James Howard Kunstler said that to prevent the Democrats from winning the midterms, Trump is “going to have to declare some kind of a national emergency. He may have to declare the Democratic Party as a seditious outlaw organization and do something about it." And he was all in favor of this: "It seems to me that circumstances may require—may require—Mr. Trump to go to a place where he has to declare certain emergency executive powers to deal with an organization that wants to destroy the country. And that means probably taking some people off the game board in a very demonstrative way."

Metaxas agreed with Kunstler and noted that President Abraham Lincoln did this. He also called for the criminal prosecutions of Obama, Comey, and Brennan. Metaxas wondered aloud what all this would look like. "I think it would probably look something like a civil war," Kunstler replied. He seemed to be rooting for that.

The pro-war crowd keeps lying about Iran’s nuclear program, suggesting that Tehran possessed nuclear weapons or, as Trump has repeatedly said, that it was two weeks away from having a nuclear bomb. Here’s Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.): “One of the objectives for this war was to destroy Iran's nukes.”

Nope. Iran had no nukes. It has almost half a ton of enriched uranium that could be enriched to a higher degree and then used in a bomb, which likely would take six months to a year to build. That’s not the same thing as possessing a “nuke.” It has had this enriched uranium for years—without yet moving to refine it into bomb-grade material.

Other Trumpists have been celebrating the execution of Trump’s war, hailing it as a welcomed break from the wars of the past. On Newsmax, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) observed, “We were horrible in Vietnam until we did Rolling Thunder One and then Rolling Thunder Two. And then we won. As soon as we do half-measures, we lose...The faster we get this over the better. If we seize Kharg Island...it could be done almost flawlessly. If we have enough firepower, it would be very easy to defend."

Then we won in Vietnam? Here’s the kicker: This guy is on both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. He ought to know that the massive bombing campaigns in Vietnam did not win the war for the United States. Not sure anyone should take his advice about what to do regarding Kharg Island.

McCormick came close to seizing the prize this week, but he lost to—get this—another idiotic remark about the Vietnam War. After Trump’s pointless speech about the Iran war on Wednesday night—during which he claimed the war was “nearing completion” but couldn’t present an exit plan—Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), one of the Trump cultists, praised Dear Leader’s address this way:

Last night…you heard from the first president since Richard Nixon who set about ending wars and did not want to have protracted wars but used large amounts of force to bring them to a close...President Trump is showing the kind of leadership we’ve been without for a long time.

Nixon entered the presidency hardly set to end the Vietnam War. About 20,000 American troops died in Vietnam in the years after he took over the war, during which he dramatically expanded the conflict. Moreover, in one of the most despicable acts in modern American history, Nixon, while the Republican presidential nominee, secretly schemed in 1968 to impede the Paris peace talks that aimed to end the war. He feared a resolution of the war would help Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey win the election, and he leaned on the South Vietnamese government to not accept a deal before the election. No accord was reached.

Nixon purposefully protracted the war for his own political interests—and thousands of Americans died. For celebrating Nixon to praise Trump, Issa wins this week’s battle over Vietnam idiocy.

The protests in Minneapolis this year inspired many Americans who saw how a community can rise up to oppose Trump’s authoritarianism. One such American was Bruce Springsteen, who wrote “Streets of Minneapolis” about the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti and traveled to the Twin Cities in January to perform the song at a local club. This past week, he did what he could to inspire others. He attended the No Kings rally in Minneapolis, and on Tuesday night he and his E Street Band opened their “Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour” there.

Springsteen started the show with a short speech assailing Trump’s attacks on American values and his “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless, and treasonous administration.” He called for “resistance over complacency” and then blasted out the Edwin Starr tune “War (What Is It Good For?),” and his own “Born in the USA.”

Also included on the set list was his anti–police violence song, “American Skin (41 Shots)” and Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.” This was perhaps the most political Springsteen has been, though he has long championed progressive causes and candidates. He clearly views this tour as a component of the anti-Trump resistance. And so does Trump. On his money-losing social media site, Trump called Springsteen a “very boring singer...who looks like a dried up prune who has...a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” He added, “MAGA SHOULD BOYCOTT HIS OVERPRICED CONCERTS, WHICH SUCK.” Too late. The tour is mostly, if not totally, sold-out.

Springsteen’s stance makes me wonder why more cultural figures with huge followings are not being this explicit and confrontational, as Trump attempts to shift his creeping authoritarianism into a gallop. Taylor Swift, I’m looking at you.

I must apologize. Many readers said the recent issue on the assorted and dizzying feuds within MAGA made their heads hurt.

Larry Roth emailed:

Fascinating to read how quickly a movement driven by conspiracy theories can turn on itself. Still, as you mentioned, the money aspect is important. I keep going back Rick Perlstein’s 2012 article “The Long Con” which looks at how mail order conservatism has always been about cashing in on conspiracy theory. The internet has opened up new ways to do it. It would be nice if someone could update Perlstein’s work.

That was a Baffler article. I do believe that I and other journalists have certainly been reporting on the continued exploitation of conspiracism within the right and MAGA. Certainly, there is always more to cover.

Dale Hudson wrote in about the issue in which I challenged New York Times columnist Bret Stephens’ Pollyannish view of the Iran war:

The amazing thing I believe is that so many folks on the right enthusiastically endorsed Stephens’ analysis as if its superficiality was not blindingly obvious. There is an old saying that “Generals always fight the last war.” Here it seems like Trump is fighting the war five wars back. Stephens writes as if he never heard of the outcomes in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. 

There is a memorable incident in which American and Viet Cong soldiers had a reconciliation meeting decades after the war. An American soldier said to his former opponent, “You know you never did beat us in a single battle.” The Vietnamese soldier replied, “And yet it did not matter, did it?” The Iran War advocates are grasping at straws.

Karen Turley shared this:

I just wanted to mention that IMHO Trump is having the time of his life. All he cares about or relates to is whether or not he's being praised. Right now, the eyes of the whole world are on him, and he can jerk everyone on the planet around however he wants to. His aides protect him from hearing most of what the world thinks about that, so he feels like the king of everything. They are so shamelessly manipulating a senile, old narcissist's need for adulation so they can destroy our country and make it into some Christian Dominionist hell.

Trump is an attention whore and gets off on his ability to implement chaos throughout the world. But when he gave his speech on Wednesday night, he did not look like he was enjoying himself. War is a lot of work, and he doesn’t like to work hard.

George Marsh wrote in to highlight one story that’s been shoved aside by the war: a new assessment of the threat posed by climate change. He forwarded an article from Inside Climate News that deserves attention:

The world is in a state of climate emergency, the head of the United Nations declared Sunday, following the release of the latest State of the Global Climate report from the World Meteorological Organization.  

“Earth is being pushed beyond its limits while every key climate indicator is flashing red,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “Earth’s energy imbalance, the gap between heat absorbed and heat released, is the highest on record. Our planet is trapping heat faster than it can shed it.”

The consequences, he added, “are written into the daily lives of families struggling as droughts and storms drive up food prices, in workers pushed to the brink by extreme heat, in farmers watching crops wither, and in communities and homes swept away by floods.”

Robert Renner sent a message that I swear my mom didn’t write:

Just want you to know how much I appreciate what you do. I often repost your July 2013 piece on Groundswell to illustrate how this long-running campaign to capture our government has been orchestrated by familiar names who continually show up in Trump’s orbit, even today. If the old adage “the pen is mightier than the sword” has merit, you are among those most capable of wielding the weapon that brings us hope. Please stay in the fight.

That was one of my favorite articles. It revealed the existence of a group of conservative activists who were secretly cooking up a plan to wipe out liberals and steer the country to the right. It began:

Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner—has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for “a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation,” according to documents obtained by Mother Jones. 

You can read the rest here.

Betty Gunz emailed:

You must spend all day every day reading for preparation of and then writing this newsletter. Thank you for your diligence. And for the MoxieCam™. I hope you do get time to stop and smell the flowers and throw the ball.

I will never give away my trade secrets. And there’s always time to throw the ball because Moxie always insists. Every day at 5:00-ish in the afternoon, when I’m home, she will start to bark at me. I know what that means. I am well trained. Speaking of which...

“Moxie, what would you like for dinner? We have a chicken option, a fish option, and a vegetarian option.”
“Is the vegetarian option scrambled eggs?”
“Not today.”
“How are the chicken and fish prepared? With or without skin?”
“Each is baked. Only the fish has skin.”
“You really had to ask?”